Raging Inferno wipes out mobile home park
Pastor Dale Morgan
Raging Inferno wipes out mobile home park*
* Story Highlights
* Three-fourths of mobile homes in one park destroyed, resident says
* Families flee with little after Border Patrol gives evacuation order
* Nearby Red Cross shelter houses 585 people
* Fallen wires, potentially explosive propane tanks prohibit return
From Aaron Brodie
CNN
SPRING VALLEY, California (CNN) -- Flames and smoke drove hundreds of
people from a Southern California mobile home park, and it might not
reopen for months -- if ever, a routed resident said.
Carmen Hidalgo said the mobile home she shares in Dulzura with eight
family members was destroyed.
The fire destroyed about 100 of the 130 or so homes in the Barrett
Mobile Home and RV Park, Carmen Hidalgo of Dulzura, California, told CNN.
A creek bed that runs through the park divides the destroyed from the
spared, said Capt. Scott McLean of the California Department of Forestry
Fire Protection.
Near the trailer park's entrance, where her family's home was,
"everything's burned down to the floor," Hidalgo said.
Dulzura is about seven miles north of the Mexican border in the
desolate, scrub-covered hills east of San Diego.
At the shelter, McLean handed out a seven-page list of addresses where
homes were damaged or destroyed in the Harris, Rice and Witch fires.
There were about 60 addresses on each page.
Evacuees Tony and Brandy Clark, both 30, were pretty sure their house in
Lawson Valley east of Jamul was in trouble. Tony Clark said the hills on
both sides of their house were in flames the night before.
But the couple has been homeless before and can handle it, he said.
"We can rebuild a house. You can't rebuild a life," he said.
And besides, "We have angels like the Red Cross," he added.
An American Red Cross shelter at Steele Canyon High School in nearby
Spring Valley had 585 evacuees registered as of 6 a.m. Thursday, shelter
director Howard Wolford said. More than 200 had taken up residence in
the school gymnasium, while the rest stayed in trailers and motor homes
outside.
Teachers, staff and students from the high school are volunteering at
the shelter, which opened Sunday, Wolford said.
Many of the mobile home park's residents are migrant workers from
Mexico, and it's not known whether all were in the United States
legally, Hidalgo said.
It didn't matter to the Red Cross.
"If they're human beings, they've got red blood, we'll take care of
them," Wolford said.
Everyone from the mobile home park is at the shelter, Hidalgo said,
noting that even those whose homes weren't burned can't return because
of the danger posed by fallen electrical wires and potentially explosive
propane tanks.
"Everyone knew each other. Everyone's like a big family," she said. "Now
the ones whose homes didn't burn down are the ones who are bringing us
clothes and stuff. You know, everyone's sticking together."
Border Patrol officers came through the park Sunday morning announcing
the evacuation order. Hidalgo's family didn't have time to gather up any
belongings before fleeing.
"Our home is gone ... [but] all that's replaceable. Family isn't, you
know? The most important thing is all us. We're all out and safe."